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Work

The tools, rules, and relationships of the workplace illustrate some of the enduring collaborations and conflicts in the everyday life of the nation. The Museum has more than 5,000 traditional American tools, chests, and simple machines for working wood, stone, metal, and leather. Materials on welding, riveting, and iron and steel construction tell a more industrial version of the story. Computers, industrial robots, and other artifacts represent work in the Information Age.

But work is more than just tools. The collections include a factory gate, the motion-study photographs of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, and more than 3,000 work incentive posters. The rise of the factory system is measured, in part, by time clocks in the collections. More than 9,000 items bring in the story of labor unions, strikes, and demonstrations over trade and economic issues.

This lunch box belonged to Mr. Louis Schram, born July 27, 1894. Schram served in World War I but was rejected for service in the Second World War. Instead, he took a second job in an unidentified war plant in Toledo, Ohio, where he used the lunch box. Toledo was the site of a defense industry boom as home to the Willys-Overland automobile manufacturing plant that produced Jeeps for the military. Schram moved back to Chicago in 1944, and passed away in Wilmette, Illinois, in 1971.

This black, pressed-metal rectangular lunch pail has a slightly curved top to fit a thermos.

This ProxCard II ID badge belonged to Beth Leaman during her employment as a systems analyst at William M. Mercer-Meidinger Incorporated from 1990 until 1992. Beth Leaman worked most of her career as a computer business analyst and manager in the insurance and benefits industry focusing on employee communication and benefit selection transactions. As a manager she supervised numerous people, translating the needs of her clients to the technical skills of her employees. The ProxCard II ID is a combination ID badge and control card. By waving the badge at "readers" located at different points throughout the building, the badge controls the front door, elevator doors, doors to building wings, and access to certain rooms.

The United States Fuel Company owned the Mohrland, Utah mine as well as its company store that was run by the Mohrland Mercantile Company. This token is a form of scrip that entitled the bearer to 10 sticks of dynamite from the company score, while also allowing the company to control the distribution of explosives. Scrip is a substitute for legal tender often used in coal towns as a substitute for monetary wages or credit against the miner’s next paycheck. Scrip could only be spent in company stores for goods (often sold at a markup) and the use of scrip in lieu of pay was often a source of contention between workers and management. This token was stamped by the Salt Lake Stamp Company sometime between 1915 and 1938.

This piece of cannel coal came from the Cedar Grove Coal seam in Logan County, West Virginia. Coal powered early industrial America—first used to fire steam engines and make steel, later to generate electricity and manufacture chemicals. In 1900 almost 2% of Americans were employed as coal miners.

Constantine “Koste” Molotzak created the coal carving showing the Coaldale (Schuykill County) colliery of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company during the 1930s. The carving illustrates coal being taken into a large breaker on a pulley car, and another car filled with coal, leaving the colliery. Coal could be polished to a black glossy shine, and used to make jewelry, small statues, or images engraved on a polished surface, like the colliery here. Anna Molotzak donated the carving for her father, who died in an explosion at the Tamaqua mine April 28, 1942 at age 63.

The United States Fuel Company owned the mine in Mohrland, Utah as well as its company store that was run by the Mohrland Mercantile Company. This token is a form of scrip that entitled the bearer to one exploder (detonator) from the company score. Scrip is a substitute for legal tender often used in coal towns as a substitute for monetary wages or credit against the miner’s next paycheck. Scrip could only be spent in company stores for goods (often sold at a markup) and the use of scrip in lieu of pay was often a source of contention between workers and management. This powder token also allowed the company to control the distribution of explosives. This token was stamped by the Salt Lake Stamp Company sometime between 1915 and 1938.

The United States Fuel Company owned the mine in Mohrland, Utah as well as its company store that was run by the Mohrland Mercantile Company. This token is a form of scrip that entitled the bearer to one exploder (detonator) from the company score. Scrip is a substitute for legal tender often used in coal towns as a substitute for monetary wages or credit against the miner’s next paycheck. Scrip could only be spent in company stores for goods (often sold at a markup) and the use of scrip in lieu of pay was often a source of contention between workers and management. This powder token also allowed the company to control the distribution of explosives. This token was stamped by the Salt Lake Stamp Company sometime between 1915 and 1938.

New United Motor Manufacturing Incorporated (NUMMI) was an auto manufacturing plant in Fremont, California, operated jointly by Toyota and General Motors from 1984 until 2010. GM had operated the plant at Fremont from 1960 where the clashes between management and union workers resulted in the plant’s closure in 1982. When it reopened as a joint venture between Toyota and GM, Japanese management techniques had been studied and implemented to emphasize collaboration and teamwork between workers and management. The objects collected from NUMMI included donations from Judy Weaver (engineering department secretary) and Rick Madrid (quality control), who submitted winning essays on the concept of teamwork.

Judy Weaver’s employee identification badge is contained in a plastic sleeve that also holds pins representing projects, awards, or milestones achieved during Weaver’s work at the NUMMI plant.

Kaypro was a manufacturer of portable microcomputers running the CP/M operating system. Its first commercial model, Kaypro II, was launched in 1982. The Kaypro IV was introduced in 1983. Surprisingly, it is not the same as the Kaypro 4, which was released in 1984.

The Kaypro IV was basically a Kaypro II with added Double Sided/Double Density Drives. It had a Z80 microprocessor that ran at 2.5 MHz. The memory included 64 KB of RAM and 2 KB of ROM. Kaypro IV had a 9" monochrome monitor and a built-in speaker. The operating system was CP/M 2.2. The Kaypro IV included the word processor Wordstar, which was included in the Perfect Software Suite.

The introduction of the IBM PC in 1981 led to the rapid growth in popularity of the MS-DOS operating system for personal computers. Software developers migrated to writing for MS-DOS instead of CP/M. Kaypro was slow to make the transition in their machines, and the company never gained the kind of prominence in the MS-DOS arena that it had enjoyed with CP/M. A prime competitor for the MS-DOS portable market was Compaq, which sold an "all in one" computer that was similar to its own CP/M portable. In March 1990 Kaypro filed for bankruptcy.

This Kaypro IV was purchased with funds from a research grant obtained by Robert M. Smith, of the Department of Space History of the National Air and Space Museum. Smith's book, The Space Telescope, was written in part on this computer.

Northstar developed from a computer store called "The Original Kentucky Fried Computer." It changed its name due to impending litigation by Kentucky Fried Chicken! The company's first product was a Floating Point Math Board for S-100 computers. They then developed an inexpensive floppy drive system. This led the way to the Horizon, one of the first computers with built in floppy drives.

Announced in November 1977, the Horizon was sold in a wooden cabinet, as opposed to the more usual metal or plastic. The initial price was $1,899 assembled and $1,599 unassembled. The Horizon ran on a Z-80 microprocessor that ran at 4 MHz. It contained 16 KB of RAM, which could be expanded to 64 KB and 1 KB of ROM. The operating system was both CP/M and Northstar DOS. The machine was among the first to offer floppy drives, and customers could order one or two 90 KB 5 ¼" drives. Northstar was also one of the first machines to offer a hard disk drive. This was called an HD-18, and had 18 Megabytes on an 18" platter. The Northstar Horizon was suited for business, education, and software development applications.

This particular machine was donated to the Smithsonian by Peter A. McWilliams, author of the popular book, The Personal Computer book, (1983) which became a runaway bestseller. This was his first computer.